About Me

Sunday, December 08, 2013

(Again, it's been a while since I've posted here, but life's been busy. Since my last entry I've married off another of my children and written, edited, and submitted another novel. Between all that and working for a living, there hasn't been much time for blogging. But I finally got around to a review of Ceremony of Innocence, a recent novel from Ignatius. Hopefully it won't be as long until my next post.)

For my birthday I
received a copy of the recently released Ceremony of Innocence
by Dorothy Cummings McLean. I'd
read the synopses and was intrigued, but wanted to find out just
where the author went with all those elements in her debut novel. I
was pleased by the quality of the writing – the
story drew me in easily and engaged me in the plot and characters.
This is important, because if “Catholic” authors are going to
escape the “Catholic literature ghetto” (you know – that
place where people buy
“Catholic works” in order to support the authors, not because
they necessarily enjoy the stories), then first and foremost the
authors need to be high quality artists. If this is what
McLean can
do in her first novel, I have
high hopes for her later efforts.

The
story takes place in and
around Frankfurt, Germany in
2008. The protagonist is
Catriona McLelland, a woman in her 30s who is Canadian by birth but
was raised in Scotland and now works as a field
reporter. (Though Catriona
isn't an example of the author writing herself into her own story, it
seems clear that Miss McLean is drawing on her own experience as a
foreign journalist to flesh out her characters.) “Cat”, as she
is known, lives the life of a modern urban professional. She is
divorced and awaiting word on her annulment, lives with her
decade-younger university student boyfriend,
and spends
time in clubs leveraging her low-level celebrity status to flit about
the edges of the privileged class of the wealthy and noble.

McLean
paints a picture of postmodern, post-Christian European culture that
is gritty, dingy, and a little depressing. Cat herself is no heroine
– she is a “tribal” Catholic who knows but does not live by the
tenets of her faith. She cannot claim ignorance. She has a
doctorate, understands the subtleties and nuances of the
Faith, works for a Catholic
news agency, and writes
“spiritual” books on the side. But
despite this
knowledge, her life far more reflects the values of the world in
which she lives than the ideals of the Kingdom of God. She's casual
about her occasional heavy drinking and drug use as
well as her concubinage with
her boyfriend . McLean handles the character well. Because the
story is told from Cat's
perspective in the first person, the reader is naturally sympathetic.
But as the plot unfolds, one gets a better picture of Catriona –
her condescending treatment of her boyfriend, her dalliance with the
amoral “butterfly set”, the implicit cynicism of her double life
as a spiritual and religion writer who lives in such moral confusion.
I found myself
sympathetic to Cat in the fullest sense, as uneasy and ambivalent
about her identity and behaviour as I can imagine such a person would
be herself.

The
plot centers around the entry of Suzy into Cat's settled existence.
Suzy is an idealistic young westerner who also hails from Canada,
which in her mind gives her a natural relationship
with Cat. Suzy has decided political opinions as well as (eventually)
an eye on Cat's boyfriend. Out of respect for their friendship, Suzy
is above board with Cat about this attraction, which introduces
tension into their relationship but does not end it.
The jaded, sophisticated Cat
initially views Suzy as a dilettante, a child with a cause and a
credit card. But
as the story unfolds and they are thrown together in some very
unusual circumstances, hints of deeper and more disturbing things
begin to surface. I won't
give away any critical details, but suffice it to say that it turns
out that Suzy is involved in some ugly stuff and comes to a bad end
(something that is known from the opening pages – the driving
question of the book
is at whose hands?) The most compelling part of the story is
watching the moral dilemma in
which Cat
finds herself as she struggles with the disturbing knowledge
she gains as the tale unfolds.
This tension is particularly acute when Cat's
boyfriend leaves her for Suzy – a development that has almost
nothing to do with Suzy's allure and everything to do with Cat's
waffling and duplicitous treatment of him.

As
I pondered the story and its
intricacies, one theme that became increasingly clear was how Cat was
the mother of Suzy. Not literally, of course – the two women were
only about 10 years apart in age – but philosophically. There will
always be high-minded crusaders with young heads on their young
shoulders, but ideally they would be assisted by wiser elders who, if
they haven't always walked paths of righteousness, at least gained
wisdom from the lessons learned when they didn't. Cat walks in
neither righteousness nor wisdom, and thus can provide neither good
guidance nor good example when
Suzy appears,
searching for a life of high
ideals and stringent standards, a cause to live up to and sacrifice
for. When she looked at Catholics
like Catriona, she saw
nothing of that, and thus looked elsewhere. If Cat and those like
her had been living a vibrant and dynamic faith, people like Suzy
might have an alternative to dangerous places where error is taught.

Even
though this type of story isn't my first choice to read, I found
Ceremony of Innocence
a good novel,
and hope to see more from Miss McLean in years to come. One bit of
technical advice I might offer: the story is told in a flashback mode
that gets a little confusing at times. It opens in the immediate
aftermath of some dramatic developments, and then goes back to fill
in the background of how matters came to this point. However, this
flicking back and forth between the “current” situation and the
“past” that explains it happens at several points in the story,
and I
struggled at times to figure out just what “present” I was in.
I understand this technique,
having used it myself, but with a story of this length and complexity
it proved a little clumsy. Perhaps
a more chronologically linear storyline would help the next work –
either that, or clearer delineations between what time the reader is
in. But
this is not a showstopper, and those who love thrillers set in exotic
locations and filled with dark secrets will not be disappointed by
Dorothy McLean.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Again, my long neglect of this blog
has not so much been because I have forsaken writing, but because my
writing energies have been focused along more creative lines.
Hopefully you all will have a chance to appreciate those energies in
due time; in the meantime, here are some thoughts on developments in
our lives:

I
recently had the opportunity to do something that I'm not going to
have many opportunities to do: walk a lovely daughter down the aisle
at her wedding. This old custom, known as “giving away”, raises
hackles in some quarters, who automatically paint it as a degrading
vestige of patriarchy, with the woman being treated like property to
be handed off from one Domineering Male to another.

Fortunately,
the participants and attendees at this wedding were too well-educated
to buy into such simplistic interpretations, but the term offers a
good opportunity to meditate on the nature and manners of love. Of
course, my daughter was never “mine” in a proprietary sense, even
when she was a newborn. She hasn't even been “mine” in a
custodial sense for many years, since she eased into a mature and
personal relationship to her True Father. She's lived on her own for
quite some time, traveled further and studied more than I have, made
courageous and costly decisions, and accepted responsibility for her
own life. Of course I've supported her as I could, offering support
and sympathy and feeble advice, but I've by no means directed her
life – she's made her own decisions.

Still
and all, I think there's an important lesson behind the custom of
“giving away”, and I could hardly find a better living example of
it than the wedding itself. In all her travels and studies, my
daughter has made many friends – not just casual acquaintances, but
serious heart companions. She has poured herself out in love to
those she meets, at times at great personal cost. She has given
herself away in love, because love is the most important thing on
earth.

At the
wedding we saw some of that coming back around. One of the guests
was a friend of my daughter's who had gone through some turbulent
times in her life some years before. My daughter helped her through
those times – I know because my daughter would retreat to her room
for long, supportive phone conversations. That friend made it
through those times into a wonderful marriage to a good man, without
damaging any family relationships in the process. So when it came time
for my daughter's special celebration, this friend showed up and
essentially made herself a personal servant of my daughter and our
whole family – serving in any way necessary without regard for
dignity or convenience.
Another dear friend was there with her loving husband and wonderful
little baby boy. I know that my daughter had helped both the friend
and her husband during some difficult years before their marriage –
not with professional counsel, but with a steadfast, loving presence.
I can't say for sure, but my
guess is that my daughter's love was a critical component in that
family forming and staying together. They were there to support and
embrace my daughter as she began her married life.

These
are but two examples of how the love which my daughter had poured out
came flowing
back to her on that blessed day. The hall was full of people who
were there to rejoice with the new couple and, in a small way, pour
back the love that they had poured out in their time (I'm sure it was
equally true of my new son-in-law, but I don't know his stories as
well.) My daughter had given herself away over the years, given in
love in response to her Heavenly Father's promptings, and
now love was given back to her.

So,
what am I saying? That love is a prudent investment because it
always has a good ROI? That's a self-contradictory attitude –
something that is done in a calculating manner, trying to evaluate
the “return”, is something other than love. Love can only be
freely given by independent agents who seek the good of another –
anything less fall short of true love. Sometimes we get a chance to
perceive the fruit of our love, sometimes we don't. My daughter saw
some of it on her wedding day (and that was a lot!),
but I imagine that much more wasn't manifested there due to simple
practicalities – people couldn't make it, etc. But in time, all
the love she has poured out will come pouring back to her, as it does
for all of us.

In
that sense, all acts of love are “giving away”. I didn't walk
down that aisle to “give away” my daughter as one would give away
an object. What I was “giving away” was love – in this case
the loving person my daughter had become, freely and joyfully granted
into the capable hands of her new husband, who will pour himself out
in love for her good. It was a symbolic act, but one that
exemplifies the very nature of love.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

For the last 15 years or
so, this weekend – just around the last weekend in January – has
been the one where Ellen and I headed off for our much-anticipated
winter getaway weekend at a nearby resort town. The town has a busy
summer season but both pace and prices reduce significantly in the
wintertime, and it's not far away so travel isn't a big issue. We
started this when all the kids were still at home but had gotten old
enough to leave, and the pace of parenting was nonstop. We started
heading off for just a weekend, but the time proved so therapeutic
that we started extending our stay until we were heading over for
five days.

It's hard to convey just
how much this time has meant to us. To have just a few days to
ourselves, without any time pressure, was like a renewal for us and
for our marriage. To be free from the relentless, 24/7,
always-on-call responsibility of parenthood was such a relief that we
took to calling the time “depressurization”. One of the reasons
we extended the weekend was that we found that it took a full day or
so after we got there just to slow down. We'd so look forward to
this that, at random times throughout the year (particularly if the
pressures were mounting), we'd look at each other and say “five”
or “nine” - that being the number of months until our getaway.
It never failed to elicit a smile and a rush of calm.

This year, though, we
weren't able to make it. We had to call and cancel our reservation.
The finances just wouldn't bear the cost. Now, it would be easy to
get all caught up in the disappointment of this, and mope about
grieving over what we might be doing if we'd been able to have our
winter getaway, etc. But there are a few things different this time.
One is that the pace of our ordinary life has slowed considerably.
All the kids are really, truly out of the house, so usually it's just
us living at a more sedate pace. Sure, we appreciate the chance for
a responsibility-free long weekend, but we hardly need
it in the same way we did ten years ago.

But
another thing happened during the Christmas season. My son and
daughter were on their way across our state in the wintry weather,
hit a slushy ramp, and rolled the car. Thankfully, they were both
securely strapped in and walked away with nothing worse than bumps
and scrapes, but the event was an ugly shock for us all, and
especially for my son who had to go through the hassle of replacing
his totaled car.

Obviously,
that's the sort of thing that makes you stop and think about what's
important in your life. Having your children came frighteningly
close to major injury or death sweeps the trivial things to the
fringes in a big hurry. We celebrated our “all-together”
Christmas – which was what they were coming for – with extra
appreciation for the fragility of life and the preciousness of loving
relationships. I've spent a lot of time being extra thankful to the
Lord for sparing our children.

I'm
not suggesting for a moment that I think there was some kind of
cosmic trade-off here, that somehow the “price” of our children's
protection was our foregoing our getaway weekend. That's not how God
works. What I am saying is that life-rattling events cause you to
step back from situations you're too close to and look at them in the
broader context. Sure, a decade and a half of special couple time is
a great record, and would be a wonderful one to continue. But
nothing dire is going to happen if it's missed for a year. Having a
child seriously injured or killed in an automobile accident – now
that would be dire.

At
this point, I've no idea what the future holds. Maybe we'll pick up
again next year (when I canceled the reservation, I made one for next
January), and this will just be the “year we missed”. Maybe
we'll be able to only do it sporadically in years to come. Maybe
we'll never have another such weekend, because the time for them in
our lives has passed. Whatever the outcome, it's in God's hands, and
I'm much more comfortable leaving it there. Special things like
getaway weekends are wonderful gifts, but He has so many other
blessings, everyday blessings that we tend to take for granted and
even forget are blessings.